Reed Irvine - Editor
K.L. Billingsley is California correspondent of The Spectator of London and a researcher for The Center for the Study of Popular Culture. This article originally appeared in The San Diego Union.
After years of trekking through the vast wastelands of commercial television, Americans discovered an oasis: the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Here the victims of such dreadful hokum as Gilligan's Island and Mr. Ed could see literate sagas like Brideshead Revisited on Masterpiece Theatre. Further, viewers could actually learn something from programs such as The Story of English and Nova. And instead of blow-dried "anchormen" reading Teleprompters, the public could experience a true clash of ideas on The McLaughlin Group and MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour. This kind of quality and variety, however, does not apply across the board. There is solid evidence that, while delivering the goods in some areas, PBS is cheating the public in others.
Documentary films, however brilliant, do not draw well in theaters, which seldom book them. And because they fail to command high ratings, the three commercial television networks have for the most part stopped producing and airing such programs. As a result, documentary film- makers who want the broader public to see their work, and the people who want to see it, basically are limited to one outlet: PBS.
From the standpoint of production values, most of the documentaries on PBS score well. But in the area of content, certain themes and subjects tend to dominate. This network, in effect, has a monopoly on the medium. The popular Frontline series, for example, has featured no less than 11 programs on Central America and related subjects. These include a highly favorable portrayal of the so-called "sanctuary" movement, which helps refugees from all Central American countries except Nicaragua. Some of the other titles betray a bias: Our Forgotten War, about El Salvador, and War on Nicaragua, about the Contras. As it happens, both those conflicts are civil wars.
Two Frontline programs, Murder on the Rio San Juan and Guns, Drugs, and the CIA, depended heavily on the views of the Christie Institute, a Washington-based center of political activism, which postures as a religious organization. The conspiratorial fantasies of the Christic Institute are truly breathtaking and have elicited criticism even from leftist publications such as Mother Jones and The Nation. A Florida judge recently dismissed the Christics' lawsuit against John Singlaub, Ted Shackley, and others, and ordered the Christics to pay over $1,000,000 of legal costs to the defendants. Frontline officials refused to hear appeals for an apology or retraction from those who had been slandered in the programs. PBS has also aired Bill Moyers' The Secret Government, which the Christics now sell as a book for $9.95.
A number of Frontline programs are critical of the U.S. military and the alleged misconduct of the CIA. Others spin dark fears about old Nazis in the United States. Other favorite targets include apartheid, televised religion, and Israel. On May 21, Frontline offered Israel -- the Covert Connection, which portrayed that country as a mere appendage of U.S. policy helping to spread poverty and misery around the world. The producer was Leslie Cockburn, author of Out of Control, an hysterical book about the CIA. Few, if any, observers of the political scene would consider Cockburn an objective commentator on any subject. But such people are right at home on PBS.
But it is not only what PBS presents that must be taken into account. To determine whether their approach is fair and balanced, the subjects they neglect must also be surveyed. Here, too, a clear pattern emerges. Several Frontline programs examine issues related to Vietnam, including the My Lai massacre, but only one program focuses on Vietnam under communist rule. None specifically treats the "reeducation" camps or the continuing exodus of boat people, the most destitute refugees of our time. None examines the mass murder in Cambodia under Pol Pot, whom even George McGovern said was "worse than Hitler."
In similar style, there has been only one program on a profoundly important geopolitical development of the last decade: the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The murderous, nine-year Iran-Iraq war is also neglected. There have been no programs dealing with the practice of forced abortion and infanticide in the People's Republic of China, and nothing about Indira Gandhi's campaign of forced sterilization in India. The planned famine (1 million victims), forced resettlement, and mass political killings by Ethiopia's Marxist regime constitute the worst violations of human rights in Africa in recent years. But only one Frontline program has dealt with Ethiopia, compared to five on South Africa. Likewise, only one Frontline effort examines China, one of the most militarized and repressive countries in the world.
Revealing Pattern of Rejection
It is not the case that documentary material on Cuba and other communist states is lacking. On the contrary, a body of work does exist. Beyond their habits of neglect, this material provides examples of what PBS chooses to reject.
Nestor Almendros is an expatriate Cuban cinematographer who won an Academy Award for his work on Days of Heaven. Almendros has produced two documentaries dealing with Fidel Castro's repressions. The first, Improper Conduct, won awards in Europe, where it was widely aired. PBS has not aired the film, which few in North America have seen. Almendros' second documentary effort, Nobody Listened, also won awards. It has been sold to French and Spanish television, and was profiled on Canada's popular Fifth Estate program. Almendros tried to place Nobody Listened with the P.O.V. (Point of View) series on PBS, and made every effort to accommodate them. But some P.O.V. officials charged that Almendros' work was not objective. However, they were not willing to identify or discuss any specific programs. And if they did decide to go with Almendros' film, they said, it would be necessary to balance it with a response by Saul Landau. Landau is a friend of Fidel Castro and a slavish apologist of Cuba's communist dictatorship. The final decision has not been made, but the producers do not like their chances.
Such concerns for accuracy and balance did not arise when PBS aired Fire on the Mountain, a film bulked with Sandinista propaganda and which removed all shots of Eden Pastora, the famous "Comandante Zero." The similarly titled Fire from the Mountain, part of the P.O.V. series, profiled a Sandinista politician and author without a response from writers oppressed by the Sandinistas, such as Pablo Antonio Cuadra. Neither did concerns for fairness arise with other PBS fare such as The Africans, which vilified the West and praised Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi. They were also notably absent with The Good Fight, a treatment of the Spanish Civil War from a strongly Stalinist viewpoint. This film ignored the accounts of, among others, George Orwell, who also fought in that conflict. Stalinists, in fact, appear to get special treatment on public broadcasting.
PBS aired Witness to Revolution, a sympathetic treatment of Anna Louise Strong, an ardent Stalinist who successfully posed as a journalist. Strong once wrote that "one must not make a god of Stalin; he was too important for that." She used to brag how much pro-Soviet propaganda she had smuggled into the Western press. While subjects such as this are welcome at PBS, documentary portraits of Strong's genocidal mentor are effectively banned from the scene.
Harvest of Despair, produced in collaboration with the National Film Board of Canada, was the first documentary analysis of Stalin's forced famine of 1932- 33, which killed between 5 million and 10 million Ukrainians. The film was showed in Canada and Europe, where it won awards, but PBS refused to include it as part of any documentary series, or even as a separate program. It wound up on William F. Buckley's Firing Line, which is where P.O.V. officials suggested Nestor Almendros take his work. This was doubtless an attempt by PBS to identify it with a "right wing" point of view, thereby implying that the other documentary forums offer a strictly neutral perspective.
Other films have failed to gain access to any programs seen on PBS. The Other Europe is a six-part documentary on the Eastern bloc produced by Czech-French historian Jacques Rupnik. Although it had already been shown and praised in England, its reception on these shores was rather frigid.
WGBH in Boston is the source for many PBS programs, and is also where key decisions about national distribution are made. (Most documentary makers have neither the time nor the money to negotiate with the hundreds of individual affiliates.) In the case of The Other Europe, Peter McGhee and David Fanning of WGBH delayed a decision for six months and finally turned the project down. Incredibly, one of the many countries planning to air Rupnik's series is Hungary, still a communist state.
It cannot be claimed that films by Almendros and Rupnik lack quality. Indeed, they are superior to much PBS fare, particularly recent works by the overexposed Bill Moyers. Since critics have been unable and unwilling to substantiate any claims in error, accuracy cannot be the problem. Neither is avoidance of controversy a credible excuse, since many PBS programs, to their credit, are highly controversial. Why, then, does PBS consistently keep such material from the American public? One observer has a theory.
Public broadcasting, he says, is "ideologically monolithic." Not only so, but "the reigning orthodoxy is left-wing." These are not the words of a conservative media critic such as Reed Irvine -- though he doubtless would agree. It is the studied opinion of Martin Peretz, editor of the liberal New Republic, who lives in Boston and teaches at Harvard. WGBH's David Fanning, says Peretz, is "known in town as a leftist ideologue."
Why did Fanning reject The Other Europe? Because, Peretz says, he "especially didn't like Rupnik's views, which are unfashionably disapproving of the Soviets." Columnist Richard Reeves has served as chief correspondent for Frontline and contends that Fanning "makes all the decisions."
The rejection of a program does not, in itself, substantiate the charge of ideological bias. However, "when the rejections begin to fall into a clear pattern," comments Peretz, "they amount to political censorship." In the case of PBS, the pattern has been clear for some time and constitutes a serious problem.
The political censorship of television is to be expected in Albania, but is out of line in a democracy. It is, moreover, particularly unacceptable for a "public" broadcasting "service" with a mandate to present, equally and fairly, a diversity of material and viewpoints to the American public.
In addition, aside from a few faith healers, no one pleads for money like PBS. The blatant unfairness is an abuse of trust and an insult to the generosity and intelligence of those who give their hard-earned money to sustain public television. PBS has done much to improve the quality of television, but there is a way it could make it even better. It could own up to having turned the documentary service of a public network into the "agitprop" arm of the left. It could broaden the way decisions are made, so that they reflect true political diversity. And it could start by letting the American people see what PBS has willfully denied them: award-winning documentaries by some of the best filmmakers in the world.
A shortened version of the above article appeared in The Miami Herald on September 25. Bruce L. Christensen, the president of the Public Broadcasting Service, published a reply in the Herald on October 15. He displayed some fancy footwork in his reply. He gave the impression he was rebutting Billingsley, but actually he ducked nearly every one of Billingsley's specific criticisms.
Billingsley's case against PBS can be summarized in eight points. Six of them dealt with the PBS weekly documentary series Frontline. Bruce Christensen failed to respond to five of Billingsley's six criticisms of what Frontline had or had not done. Here are the criticisms.
1. The weekly Frontline series has featured 11 programs on Central America and related subjects, two of which depended heavily on the views of the discredited far-left Christic Institute. 2. "A number of Frontline programs are critical of the U.S. military and the alleged misconduct of the CIA. Others spin dark fears about old Nazis in the United States. Israel is another favorite target," as suggested by a May 21 program that portrayed Israel "as a mere appendage of U.S. policy helping to spread poverty and misery around the world." 3. "Several Frontline programs examine issues related to Vietnam, including the My Lai massacre, but only one program focuses on Vietnam under Communist rule. None specifically treats the 'reeducation camps' or the continuing exodus of boat people. None examines Cambodia under the murderous Khmer Rouge." 4. There has been only one Frontline program on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and none on forced abortion and infanticide in China. 5. Only one Frontline program has dealt with Ethiopia, where a planned famine and mass killings have occurred, but there have been five programs on South Africa. 6. Only one Frontline program has "examined" Cuba, one of the world's most repressive societies.
This last point was the only criticism of Frontline that Christensen claimed was flawed. He said there were two additional Frontline programs on Cuba. He did not identify or characterize either of them.
Christensen tried to give the appearance of rebutting Billingsley by citing other programs in the PBS schedule that dealt with some of the subjects mentioned. For example, he diverted attention from the criticism of Frontline's neglect of Cuba by citing two documentaries on Cuba and discussions of Cuba on other programs such as American Interests, Firing Line, MacNeil/Lehrer, Washington Week in Review, and Smithsonian World. One of the two documentaries he cited, Cuba, In the Shadow of Doubt, was characterized in a review in The New York Times as having "at its best...a romantic infatuation with Cuba, and at its worst (being) calculated propaganda." We critiqued this documentary in the October-B 1986 AIM Report, pointing out the irony of its airing shortly after publication of Against All Hope, Armando Valladares' great book about his 22 years as a prisoner of Castro.
Christensen didn't deny that Frontline had aired only one program on Afghanistan, but he twisted this criticism of Frontline into a criticism of all PBS programming, saying, "'only one program about the invasion of Afghanistan'? Hardly." He cited discussions of Afghanistan on three other programs: American Interests, Firing Line and the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Similarly on China, he did not claim that Frontline had dealt with forced abortions and infanticide, but he cited two other programs that he claimed had done so. He did not respond to Billingsley's criticism of the failure of Frontline to deal with the reeducation camps, the boat people or Cambodia. Instead, he twisted Billingsley's criticism of Frontline into a charge that no PBS documentaries had dealt with Cambodia, and he cited two that had done so.
Billingsley focused on Frontline, not the entire PBS documentary schedule, because analysis of those programs was a manageable project for a newspaper column. Frontline documentaries comprise such a large part of the PBS political documentary schedule that this analysis was likely to be indicative of tendencies and problems. He had been able to obtain a complete list of all the Frontline programs, together with a brief description of each. An analysis of all PBS political documentaries would be a more formidable project, but there is good reason to think that it would also reveal a strong left-wing bias.
Billingsley pointed out that documentaries PBS had rejected provided clear evidence of this bias. He cited two documentaries on Cuba, both of them award winners and both highly critical of the Castro regime, Improper Conduct and Nobody Listened, both the work of the distinguished Cuban cinematographer, Nestor Almendros. He also cited the refusal by PBS to air Harvest of Despair, the story of the 1932-33 famine in the Ukraine manufactured by Stalin and The Other Europe, a six-part series on Eastern Europe that had an anti-communist point of view.
Billingsley quoted the editor of the liberal New Republic, Martin Peretz, as saying that PBS is "ideologically monolithic" and that its "reigning orthodoxy is left-wing." He said David Fanning of WGBH-TV, the man who "makes all the decisions" for Frontline programs "is known in town (Boston) as a leftist ideologue." Christensen's only comment on this was a denial that PBS is "ideologically monolithic," saying it is "ideologically diverse," since it "showcases the work of over 200 producers a year." He didn't even try to explain the rejection of the excellent anti-communist documentaries cited by Billingsley.
PBS officials have acknowledged that the independent film producers on whom they rely for much of their documentary programming tend to be liberal-left in their views. The executive producer of the PBS P.O.V. series, Marc Weiss, has disclosed that of 900 proposals for documentaries he received last season "maybe half a dozen were made from the conservative point of view."
If PBS were as interested in balance as Christensen claims in his reply to Billingsley, it should be easy for good right-of-center documentaries to win acceptance by PBS, since there are so few to choose from. Christensen has a duty to explain the rejection of the high quality films cited by Billingsley. It is simply not good enough to say that PBS programmers "do their best to find quality television projects and let the political chips fall where they may."
Christensen criticizes Billingsley for indicting the whole of public television on the basis of what one series, Frontline, has or has not covered. He wants PBS to be judged on the basis of all its documentary programming. But when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting wanted to fund a scholarly study to do just that in 1986, PBS fought it tooth and nail and succeeded in blocking it. Could it be that PBS feared that such a study would prove that the kind of charges made by Billingsley are true? Christensen's demonstrated inability to prove Billingsley wrong strongly supports that suspicion.
Send the enclosed card or your own card or letter to Bruce L. Christensen, the president of PBS, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA 22314. Also write or call your representatives in Congress to get them to demand an analysis of PBS documentary programming.
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AIM Report NOTES FROM THE EDITOR'S CUFF
AT&T, IN CONJUNCTION WITH ABC, PRESENTED THE NATION WITH A REHASH OF Watergate on October 29. This was a three-hour docudrama rifled The Final Days, based on the Woodward and Bernstein book of the same rifle. It is very rare for a single company to buy all the advertising time on a single hour of television prime time these days. AT&T thought so highly of The Final Days that it bought all three hours from 8 to 11 P.M. on a Sunday night. It refused to disclose how much it had invested in the program, but it was a very costly buy. We raised questions about this program with the top people at ABC at the CapCities/ABC annual meeting last May and again in a private meeting Joe Goulden and I had with Thomas S. Murphy, the chairman of the board, and two of his aides on July 27. At the latter meeting, the ABC officials said flatly that no outside experts had been consulted to insure that none of the numerous errors in the book found their way into the TV version. They said ABC staffers were checking the facts by looking at other books.
WE WEREN'T SATISFIED WITH THAT RESPONSE, AND WE URGED AT&T TO USE ITS influence to insure that the program was accurate. We communicated that wish to all the members of the AT&T board. Board chairman Robert E. Allen responded that our concerns about possible inaccuracies had been discussed with ABC. He said, "They have assured us that these allegations are without merit." He added, "Further, you should know that AT&T did not produce this dramatization, nor have we controlled the creative process. Our role is limited to that of sponsor....To the degree advertisers control the content of programming, that programming will become of less interest to thoughtful viewers. That means, however, that neither all viewers nor we will always agree with everything that is broadcast. And that is as we believe it should be."
WE HAD NOT ASKED MR. ALLEN TO ASSUME CONTROL OF THE CREATIVE PROCESS. All AIM asked was that AT&T apply to the program the same quality control standards that it applies to the goods and services that it supplies to its customers. He and his board were warned that the book, The Final Days, contained many serious misstatements of fact. These included charges that both President and Mrs. Nixon were drinking heavily, and this was reflected in the allegation in the book that the night before he resigned Nixon had, in the presence of Henry Kissinger, imbibed heavily, lost control of himself, sobbed, got down on his knees and prayed out loud, pounded the carpet with his fist, crying, "What have I done? What has happened?" And, said the book, he curled up on the floor like a child. This was the most dramatic story in the book.
THIS WAS ALSO THE MOST DRAMATIC SCENE IN THE ABC-AT&T DOCUDRAMA. HOW much truth was there to it? Both Nixon and KissLager discuss it in their memoirs. Nixon says he and Kissinger had "a business-like" discussion and that he invited Kissinger to join him in kneeling in silent prayer. Kissinger says that their long discussion was not all business-like, that Nixon did become distraught and wept, and invited him to pray with him. He denies that the President ever lost control of himself or behaved in the bizarre manner alleged by Woodward and Bernstein. Since Nixon and Kissinger were the only two people who were present, and since both deny the Woodward-Bernstein story, there is no justification for presenting this fabrication as history.
HAD ABC EMPLOYED OUTSIDE CONSULTANTS TO CHECK THE ACCURACY OF ITS program, or had its own broadcast standards division exercised proper surveillance, the producers would have been told that there was no factual foundation for this scene and that it would have to be omitted. ABC's own researchers knew that this story lacked any verification. That left ABC with a dilemma. This was the most famous story in The Final Days, one that helped make the book a bestseller. Its omission from the docudrama would both deprive the film of one of its few moments of high drama and would constitute a glaring repudiation of the accuracy of the book. ABC did the dishonorable thing. It used the fabrication, making Nixon appear pathetic and bizarre. In an op-ed article in The New York Times, Leonard Garment, a prominent Washington lawyer and former Nixon aide, described this as "contemptible," and predicted that the courts might yet decide that such dramatized lies don't deserve the protection of the first amendment.
THE NEW YORK TIMES FOLLOWED GARMENTS ARTICLE WITH A STRONG EDITORIAL saying, "Parts of the film were based on transcripts of the Nixon tapes and hence authentic. Parts derived from other books. Parts were fictional dialogue. Yet viewers knowing of the transcripts may have assumed the rest was as solidly based. It wasn't: even the original book cited so few sources that its methodology was roundly criticized. Viewers of The Final Days needed forceful warnings about the varied authenticity of the source materials." The editorial concluded: "Print and screen journalists have a duty to the truth and to their audiences. Like fictional quotations, reenactments of the news betray both."
AT&T HAS SULLIED ITS REPUTATION FOR EXCELLENCE BY ITS ASSOCIATION WITH this flawed program. Its top officials had ample reason to know that they were promoting a defective product. Richard Nixon himself had advised them of this and had expressed his disgust when they declined to give any assurance that the program would not repeat the serious distortions of the book. Joe Goulden, AIM's director of media analysis, sent AT&T Chairman Robert E. Allen and all members of his board copies of a 1976 AIM Report carrying a devastating 12-page critique of the Woodward and Bernstein book by Victor Lasky. Joe's letter said, "AT&T has an obligation to insure that programming carrying the prestige of its name meet standards of fairness, accuracy and decency." AT&T has refused to honor that obligation. It tells its advertising agencies to avoid placing its ads on network programs that include excessive sex and violence or "inflammatory or demeaning portrayals of any individual or group's religion, political affiliation, ethnicity or gender." You may wish to join us in suggesting to Chairman Robert E. Allen that he add to that list programs that present lies as truth. His address is 550 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10022.
ALL TOO OFTEN WE DON'T WRITE THANK YOU NOTES TO THOSE OF YOU WHO SEND in clippings and other useful information. But your letters and enclosures are very much appreciated. The lead story in this AIM Report was called to my attention first by one of our members in San Diego, who sent in a copy of K.L. Billingsley's excellent article from the San Diego Union. Then another AIM member in Miami sent both the shorter version that had been published in the Miami Herald and the response from Bruce L. Christensen, the president of PBS. I had been thinking about getting permission to reprint Billingsley's excellent article, but after seeing Christensen s reply my mind was made up. Billingsley is a young American who is working with David Horowitz and Peter Collier on a new project, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. The center intends to delve into the politics of the entertainment industry.
HOROWITZ AND COLLIER ARE THE CO-AUTHORS OF DESTRUCTIVE GENERATION, a great book about the '60s, which is available from AIM. This is one of several new books listed in our new book and tape catalog (Winter, 1989-90). If you have any young relatives who are a bit confused about their political orientation, buy them a copy of this book for Christmas. If you are one of AIM's regular book buyers, you will be getting a copy of the new catalog soon. If you have not previously bought books or tapes from AIM but would like to take advantage of the free books and videos at great savings use the coupon below. (Your #10 self-addressed stamped envelope will help.)
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